Vice President, Product Design & Research

Docusign • San Francisco, CA

9d • Hybrid

About The Position

As the Vice President of Product Design & Research, you will direct and manage a global design organization to deliver elegant, customer-focused experiences for millions of users around the globe. You will define, articulate, and champion a single, cohesive experiential design vision to deliver world-class end-to-end customer experiences that drive corporate goals and significant business impact. In this role, you will lead our design teams, fostering a culture of high collaboration, design excellence, and increased product maturity across next-generation AI interfaces and product surfaces. This position is a people manager role reporting to the Chief Product Officer.

Requirements

• 15+ years of experience executing product design for consumer, enterprise, or mobile user experiences
• 8+ years of experience managing and mentoring managers of individual contributor designers
• Bachelor's degree or above in a design-related discipline, or equivalent practical work experience

Nice To Haves

• Executive experience in a senior design leadership role (VP or equivalent), successfully leading large-scale, cross-functional design organizations within a scaled SaaS environment
• Deep Product Design & Research expertise, spanning full customer lifecycles and interface touchpoints
• Proven track record of developing and executing design strategies for AI/ML-powered products, natural language user interfaces, or intelligent workspace applications
• Demonstrated familiarity with Product-Led Growth (PLG) frameworks and designing intuitive self-service customer acquisition or monetization paths
• Experience with rapid customer innovation, iterative design, and leveraging data and analytics to drive product design choices
• Proficiency facilitating design thinking workshops with cross-functional teams to frame complex problem areas and generate game-changing innovation opportunities
• Exceptional communication, presentation, and storytelling skills with the ability to influence C-level executives and clearly articulate complex design rationale to non-design audiences
• Possession of an online portfolio or work samples showcasing extensive experience leading teams to design large-scale B2C and B2B products

Responsibilities

• Define, articulate, and champion a single, cohesive experiential design vision to deliver world-class end-to-end customer experiences
• Partner with senior cross-functional leaders, including Product, Engineering, and Marketing leadership, to tie business and company goals back into the design organization
• Set the design vision and advocate for design at all levels of the organization, ensuring strategy aligns with corporate goals, product roadmaps, and technological capabilities
• Foster a culture of collaboration, excellence, and consistent application of design standards through well thought out organizational design and processes
• Design and organize a global organization with a strong delivery process, project management framework, and clear operating models for how designers interface with product managers and engineers
• Recruit, mentor, and grow a high-performing design organization, elevating overall design maturity and impact across multiple geographic locations
• Oversee the user experience, user interface, interaction design, content strategy, and visual design across multiple global product surfaces
• Lead the development and maintenance of scalable design systems and standards to ensure absolute consistency, quality, and efficiency across all product touchpoints
• Drive the design strategy for next-generation AI capabilities, intelligent workflows, and agentic user interfaces, ensuring seamless and intuitive human-AI collaboration
• Leverage extensive user research, customer feedback, and design insights to inform decisions, gracefully balancing definitive data with professional intuition
• Champion product-led growth (PLG) initiatives through user-centered onboarding experiences, self-service discovery loops, and continuous user journey optimizations
• Balance adeptly complex commercial business needs with simple, engaging, user-centered solutions
• Measure, evaluate, and report on the concrete impact of design initiatives on key business metrics such as product adoption, conversion, retention, and customer satisfaction

Benefits

• Bonus: Sales personnel are eligible for variable incentive pay dependent on their achievement of pre-established sales goals. Non-Sales roles are eligible for a company bonus plan, which is calculated as a percentage of eligible wages and dependent on company performance.
• Stock: This role is eligible to receive Restricted Stock Units (RSUs).
• Paid Time Off: earned time off, as well as paid company holidays based on region
• Paid Parental Leave: take up to six months off with your child after birth, adoption or foster care placement
• Full Health Benefits Plans: options for 100% employer paid and minimum employee contribution health plans from day one of employment
• Retirement Plans: select retirement and pension programs with potential for employer contributions
• Learning and Development: options for coaching, online courses and education reimbursements
• Compassionate Care Leave: paid time off following the loss of a loved one and other life-changing events

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive
• Education Level: Associate degree